mizducky

Ahah ... found the website I was looking for: Razzle Dazzle -- Cooking for a Crowd. Despite its name, the majority of these recipes are pretty basic, to even simplistic. And you probably won't find a specific recipe for the dishes you're planning. But I've used the quantities of ingredients given in these recipes to give me an idea of the quantities I need for whatever dish I was thinking of making. For instance, I realize of course that it's not Boston baked beans you plan to make, but this recipe that serves 32 at least gives you a ballpark for the amount of dried beans you might want to start with. (i.e. this one says 4 pounds).

Hi Melissa--I think your menu choices sound great, and that you don't need to offer any additional protein choice since you have the pork and the beans (plus the shredded cheese garnish--I'd recommend having a good supply of this). A concern about the rice--while the pork and the beans are relatively forgiving about being cooked in large batches, rice can sometimes be a bit more fussy. Was this going to be just plain rice, or some sort of seasoned Mexican-style rice? I'd suggest giving the recipe a test run if you've not done it before, and cooking it in a couple of small batches instead of one big one. Or maybe borrow one of those large-capacity automatic rice cookers, which will cook the rice perfectly and even hold it at serving temperature for a good while. Even with the beans, another thing I've discovered with large-quantity cooking is how much longer things can take to cook. Bringing a big pot of water up to temperature to cook or reheat something like beans can take what seems like for-freakin' ever! I've learned some big lessons on planning ahead accordingly. Also, unless I clean missed it, I didn't see any mention of beverages. Is someone else providing those, or are you on for those as well? Oh yeah--is this a pre-game meal, a post-game meal, or a general social-gathering-feed-the-hungry-athletes kind of meal? To my mind, that would somewhat influence whether the athletes are looking to eat lighter or to carb out. ;-)

Just for grins, I Googled "fried lox" and found some very peculiar things. Nothing worth reporting here, though. :-D Others have already suggested my first thought--a cream sauce over pasta; I've had that with the other type of smoked salmon (the flakeable alder-smoked stuff) and the flavors match terrifically. I bet using the salmon in a risotto would also work great. I was going to suggest making sushi rolls, seeing as how lox is one of the favorite go-to fish ingredients for people who want to try sushi but are noodgy about the "raw fish" thing. But if your husband is computing lox as "raw fish" anyway, I guess that doesn't really help matters. Another thought: I've purchased frozen lox before, and as long as it hasn't been thawed you can keep it frozen for a reasonable amount of time without harm. So maybe you could just stash it away for a more opportune moment (either with more lox appreciators present, or when your husband has forgotten about its existence? )

Great question! I think I was going for the Tweet/elevator speech/SEO mindset when I came up with the handle "The Tightwad Gourmand" that I sometimes use to describe myself. Current fiscal realities have made me even more of a tightwad than before--and recent constraints on my time have forced me to become a bit of a time-miser as well--but I still manage to have fun making fun and interesting food. In fact, it's become my favorite form of cheap recreation to go sleuthing out budget markets and meals. This frugality also intersects well with my interest in ethnic cuisines, especially the Asian ones, as these food traditions tend to be a lot kinder to people who don't have a bunch of money with which to sustain themselves. I mean, yeah, you can of course go all luxury with 'em when and if you want ... but you can go low-budget and still have an interesting, fabulous meal.

I've seen those in my local Korean market. My understanding is that it's either a variety of, or a very very close relative of daikon. As a matter of fact I bought one recently and its taste and flavor were indistinguishable from daikon as far as I could tell. Which means it's rather closer to Western radishes than turnips. It'll still be great simmered in a soup, but--again in my random experience--it'll cook a bit quicker than a turnip, so take that into account.

Just an interjection here: if you're getting a teflon pan so hot that you can smell the teflon "burning," that's a pretty good sign you're overheating it. Teflon-coated pans are really meant to take no more than moderate heat. If you're going to go that hot, I'd suggest using a non-teflon pan instead.

Oh yeah, I'd come across Tsuji's opinion on frozen fish already. I just decided "oh well, guess I'll be ignoring that one ..." And yeah, it would have been nice, if they went to the trouble of putting together a 25th anniversary edition, that they'd at least footnoted specific changes in info, like the business about the sake grades. Even when I think a cookbook (or any reference book) is terrific, I almost always seek out second and third opinions, because every authority has their blind spots and hobby-horses. So -- many thanks for the heads-up on all those points of concern, Hiroyuki.

My copy of Tsuji's "A Simple Art" arrived the other day (it's the 1980 edition, in near-perfect shape). I've only had time to read/leaf through it a little, but it's already got me excited--though a little daunted; I immediately got entranced by the process of making rice bran mash pickles, but somehow, with my load of classes plus part-time job, I fear I won't have the attention span to keep up with them (plus I wonder how my roommate would take to the frangrance of a little pickle-vat in our household ). But no worries, I see lots of other things I can tackle that I could fit into even my crazy schedule. And just the sheer amount of background info has got the cookbook-reader-geek in me excited. Thanks for the recommendations, folks!

I'm going to list cookies and candy separately, for the self-serving reason that it allows me to list more items. Cookies: Pepperidge Farm Milanos--I am dangerously compulsive around these things. I can inhale an entire bag of them in the blink of an eye. Fig Newtons--when they're fresh and soft, I find them really satisfying. When they're stale, forget it. Entenmann's soft chocolate chip cookies--I may be imagining it, but these seem not quite as good as they used to be. But when I first became addicted to them, they were the next best thing to scarfing raw cookie dough. Candy: Yeah, people are right that, compared to gourmet-quality chocolate, American mass-market candy bars are pretty danged mediocre. But I still had a few Old Reliables with which I could satisfy myself: 3 Musketeers--I think I got into this one more because it was substantial in size than anything else--the light-weight filling meant the bar could be bigger and still come in at the standard (puny) weight of vending machine bars. Plus I liked the softness of the filling. Junior Mints--a texture thing again: the soft little mint patties. Plus the mintiness somehow made the chocolate coating seem a little more chocolatey. Hershey's Special Dark--As a kid I'd go through those bags of Halloween miniature chocolate bars and pick out all the Special Darks. It was my first escape from milk chocolate to the wonderful world of dark chocolate.

How about preparing them yakitori style? Chicken hearts and gizzards are standard yakitori ingredients; I bet duck hearts would taste great prepared the same way.

I too remember those plastic cups from community meetings in church basements rather from any home setting. As a matter of fact, I have a trace memory of my paternal grandmother drinking tea from Russian-style tea glasses ... she even owned a samovar, which fascinated me as a little squirt, but it sat on a sideboard unused; for everyday tea drinking she used Lipton tea bags.

You could duck the whole issue of what color the sauce winds up by topping the dish with a gratin. (sez she who is such a huge fan of mushrooms that she doesn't much care what effect they have on sauce color )

Though I second the recipe-solicitation technique of shopping for classic southern ingredients in markets whose demographics support the odds of running into a seasoned cook who might be moved to drop hints on a newbie.

I think the one repurposing thing I do that I haven't seen in this topic so far is my hoarding of those soup flavoring powder packets from packages of Asian noodle soup (ramen, udon, etc.) I usually find them way too strong and salty for a single serving of soup noodles, so I just use half a packet per serving -- or one packet per two servings if I'm either famished or want leftovers. Either way, I slowly accumulate extra soup packets, which get used on noodles that come without soup packets, or for other random seasoning purposes. I also do the plastic bag hoarding thing. One of my favorite plastic bag brainstorms: you know all those dried ingredients that come in little non-resealable plastic packets? Like chilies, or sea vegetables, or shiitake mushrooms, etc. etc. Well, I must confess that a lot of the time I just can't be bothered to hunt down containers to transfer all these little bits of stuff into, so what I do instead is to slip a bunch of them into a large plastic supermarket bag and tie the whole bag closed. No, it's not super-airtight, but it keeps them protected enough, and it also organizes them all in one place. I've also been known to slip big bags of rice, flour, etc. into plastic supermarket bags to try and shield them from bugs 'n' stuff.

Another vote for not being too fussy about getting every shred of pumpkin guts off the seeds before roasting. I don't bother to wash them, just rub off whatever rubs off. The remaining shreds of pumpkin guts caramelize really nicely. Okay, I knew the craving for pumpkin seeds was already starting to build, but now y'all have just put me over the edge.